Corkscrew

by Donald E. Westlake

  I'm sure you did, he thought, but said, 'So did I. That's a good place.'

  'Do you miss writing?' she asked.

  'I write,' he said, but he himself could hear that he was being defensive again.

  'I mean novel writing,' she said. 'Come on, you knew what I meant. The rat had to do it, I told him it was like an addiction, take him away from it a few days, it was like withdrawal, he turned into an absolute bear.'

  'I guess that's pretty normal,' he said, thinking how much Bryce must have enjoyed having Lucie describe him to himself, time after time. While he was probably trying to get back to work.

  'Nothing's normal with a writer,' she said. 'If you swore off, and I guess you must have, left it or it left you, you are no doubt a better person for it.'

  'No doubt,' he said.

  They were mostly quiet as they walked the side street over to Broadway, crossed, and turned south. Then she said, 'You're very calm, aren't you?'

  What now? 'Am I?'

  'Oh, I see a little edginess in you sometimes,' she said, 'but not a lot. I think you're basically a calm person.'

  'You do?'

  'Oh, dear. That sounds dull, doesn't it?' She pretend-smacked herself on the side of the head. 'I didn't mean dull,' she said, 'you're not dull. I just mean you're not antsy all the time.'

  He had to smile. 'Like the rat?'

  'Exactly. Why did Susan leave you?'

  'Maybe because I was dull,' he said.

  'Ouch,' she said, and briefly touched his arm, as though to ask forgiveness. 'I really didn't mean dull,' she said. 'Really.'

  'Okay.'

  'So what was it? Were you playing around?'

  'No, of course not,' he said.

  'Of course not?' When he glanced her way, he could see her give him a measuring look. He faced front again, as they approached her building, and she said, 'I can see you as a very unfaithful guy. Saying, 'Oh, it doesn't count because I only really love Susan, but boy, I would like to get next to that one, and that one.' Do you still love her?'

  'I don't know,' he said, wishing she'd ride him on some other topic. 'I suppose we go on loving the person we used to love, one way or another.'

  'Are you kidding?' They'd reached her building, and both stood on the sidewalk while she said, 'Do you think, do you honestly think, I have any love in me for the rat? My dear, he wore that off me a long time ago.'

  'Was he playing around?'

  'No,' she said, sounding disgusted. 'I don't think so, anyway. The great love of Bryce Proctorr's life, you know, is Bryce Proctorr. Why would he need to play around?'

  'Well, he should be happy now, I guess,' Wayne said.

  'I certainly hope not,' she said. 'I suppose you want to come up.'

  This was the problem he'd been worrying over since part-way through dinner. She was so aggressive, and so fast, that he had come to realize she would expect more from him on a first date than he'd expected, or was prepared for.

  I'd kill her, he thought, but I won't sleep with her, I didn't come here to be unfaithful to Susan. But what was he going to do? He didn't want to alienate Lucie, because he needed to be able to come back, to see her again, take her somewhere safe, when he was ready, when he knew exactly how to go about it, when he was armed.

  Go with it. For a while, at least, go with it. 'I suppose so,' he said, to echo what she had said: I suppose you want to come up.

  'Well, there's enthusiasm,' she said.

  'I don't want to push myself on you.'

  She tapped his chest with her fingertips. 'Don't worry, my dear, you'll never do that. But you can come up for a few minutes, if you really want. Just so you understand, I will not go to bed with you.'

  He hid his relief by pretending to hide his disappointment with a deadpan, 'Okay.'

  'We'll have one more glass of wine,' she told him, 'and we'll have a nice chat, and then I'll throw you out.'

  'It's a deal,' he said, and would have shaken her hand to confirm it, but she'd already turned away toward the entrance, and the doorman had already seen her and pushed the button to open the door.

  Once again, he hid behind that head of golden hair as they went past the doorman's desk.

  •

  'I'll just be a minute.'

  'Fine.'

  On one side wall of the living room stood a glass-doored, glass-shelved cabinet that contained a sparse display of trophies and commemorative plates from the fifties and earlier; some decorator's idea of what the nomadic businessman would like. Wayne looked at them, the honors and memorials bleached of meaning in this beige room, while Lucie went off down the interior hall again, and soon he heard a toilet flush.

  The end table with the Chinese horse and rider was near the cabinet. Wayne studied it without touching it. This artifact did have meaning for her. What?

  She came in with two glasses of the red wine, not as good as what they'd been drinking in the restaurant, but in better glasses. 'You don't mind the same glass,' she said.

  'Not at all.' He accepted the glass she reached toward him, and she held hers up for a toast, saying, 'To divorce.'

  'Sure,' he said, grinning, tapping glasses with her. 'Why?'

  'Because you get to meet all new people,' she said, and laughed, and sipped her wine.

  'Like Alzheimer's,' he said, and drank.

  She made a disgusted face. 'Oh, don't be morbid, for God's sake. What did you think of the play the other night?'

  Apparently they were to stand here, a two-person cocktail party. He said, 'It was fun.'

  Another wrong answer. She made a scrinched-up face, and said, 'Did you really like it?'

  'I take it you didn't.'

  'What trash,' she said. 'Poor Janet, that's all she gets are these lighter-than-air yuppie comedies; supposed to be all about sex, they're just about some loser's idea of witty repartee. She wants to do better work, she wants to direct at the Public, but she has to build a body of work and all it is is this trash. I told her once, 'Janet, you'll have to tie weights to the actors or they'll float up into the flies,' that's how lightweight they all are.'

  'I bet you did,' he said.

  'Of course I did. I always tell the truth, it's easier that way. You like the truth, don't you?'

  'Love it,' he said.

  'I knew you did. Is Susan any good in bed?'

  'Very,' he said, and put his wineglass down on the table next to the dynasty horse, and punched Lucie as hard as he could in the stomach.

  They were both astonished. He thought, not now! This is wrong, this isn't what I meant, this is too messy, this isn't right!

  Her eyes were widening, her arms were moving in slow motion to fold across her belly, her mouth was opening, she was folding forward. He punched her again, hard, this time in the face, and she jolted back into the cabinet, knocking plates and trophies awry, and he moved in after her.

  It's started, it's too late now, I can't go back, what am I going to do?

  She leaped at him! He hadn't expected that, either, and his deflection was clumsy, both arms swinging around, thrusting her lunge to his left. He'd thought she would keep falling, back and back, as he would go on hitting her, but her instincts were so aggressive, it was as though they were both acting without thought, even though his brain was full of thoughts, a vast confusion of thoughts, while outside his brain everything was happening too fast.

  She came at him with nails, fingers into talons, and he ducked back and away, knowing he couldn't permit her to scar him, mark him, he couldn't leave traces of his flesh under her nails. He kicked wildly, hitting the front of her right thigh, half-turning her as he backpedalled.

  She came at him again, blood on her face, mouth distorted, not screaming yet, but soon she'd scream, and he couldn't have that, either. He jumped back a pace, this time aimed, and kicked her solidly, the outside of his right shoe squarely against her right knee. She jerked toward him, and looked astonished as she fell, and he kicked her in the mouth as she was going down.

  Loud thum
p. Let the people downstairs be at the movies. She landed face down, and he dropped heavily to his knees on to her back, reached down, grabbed her jaw in his right hand, the golden hair clutched in his left, and tried to jerk her head around to the right.

  He couldn't do it, whatever he was trying to do he wasn't doing it, break her neck or twist off her head or whatever it was, it wasn't working, and he abandoned that and reached out to his left and found the table with the dynasty horse and his wineglass on it, and pulled it to him, horse and glass both flying somewhere.

  Rectangular, thin-legged table, but thick solid wooden top. He raised it over his head with both hands and brought the edge of it down hard on the back of her head. And then again on to her neck. And then again on her head.

  She wasn't moving. Her arms were half bent, up beside her head, fingers curled. He reached out to move her right arm, and it waggled. He put the table on the floor, leaned down close to her, to the bloody mess of the right side of her face, and very faintly he could hear the ragged breathing.

  Until this instant, there had been nothing sexual in it. The whole thing had been so unexpected, so unplanned, so much the result of the tension he was feeling, the fear, the doubt. She had not been a woman, she had merely been something that moved and made sound and it was his job to stop the movement and stop the sounds.

  Now, the smell of her, the warmth of the body under his, that faint sound of her breath in and out of her broken nose, and he became aware of her as a sexual being. Oh, don't, he told himself, straightening, still kneeling on her back. Don't be aroused by this, for God's sake.

  He climbed off her, shaky, tottering. He went down that interior hall and found the antiseptic bare kitchen. Her plastic-bag collection was in a plastic bag inside the doored space under the sink. He chose two large bags from the supermarket and brought them back to the living room.

  Her bowels had released. No fear any more of being turned on. He knelt beside her, fitted first one bag and then the other over her head, twisted them at the back of her neck to improve the seal. Then he closed his eyes and knelt there, holding the twisted bags.

  He stayed there like that for a long time. He didn't want to think about what he'd just done, he wanted to think about what he had yet to do. Fingerprints. The wineglass, on the floor unbroken. The end table. The doorknob. The door handle under the sink in the kitchen.

  Somewhere, she would have a datebook, probably by the phone in her bedroom. His name would be in it, for tonight. Take the entire datebook. Look around for anything else that might have his name on it, or anything about him.

  Robbery. This should be a robbery, not a boyfriend, not a crime of passion. Find jewelry, something obvious, anything, something of value, take it away, get rid of it. Rings, necklaces, cascading into the sewer. Not in this neighborhood, he'd walk close to Times Square, Ninth Avenue, where it's darker, drop the stuff into the sewer, take the subway home from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

  Planning. Planning, eyes squeezed shut. Slowly, the thoughts calmed down, and when at last he opened his eyes, he felt so drained he could barely move. All his limbs were stiff. The fingers holding the twisted plastic bags were stiff. He moved himself, this way and that, freed his fingers from the bag, then looked down at her, touched her, inspected her.

  She was dead.

  •

  As he slid into bed, Susan rolled over in the darkness and said, 'Wayne? What's wrong?'

  'It's over,' he said.

  'You aren't going to do it?'

  'It's done.'

  He turned toward her, and she put her arms around him, and he nestled his face in against the warm side of her throat, felt the beating of the pulse there. Her breath was regular in his ear, strong and regular, not weak and ragged.

  After a while, she said, 'Was it bad?'

  'Worse than you can know,' he said.

  9

  Friday afternoon, Bryce got back to the Bel Air a little after three. He'd had lunch with an actor, a star of tough-cop roles, who wanted to make a series of films based on the characters in Bryce's Twice Tolled. Bryce had thought he'd used up those characters by the end of that book, that there was nothing more to say about them, but the actor had a vision.

  He kept using the word 'franchise,' which out here apparently didn't mean Burger King but meant a continuing role in a series of films that the actor could be identified with, so that the audience would want to see him play the part again and again. The actor said the general belief out here was that audiences liked that sense of the familiar, given how much a movie ticket costs these days, but Bryce suspected it was the moviemakers themselves who needed that sense of the familiar — remakes, sequels, series, franchises — given how much a movie costs these days.

  He didn't know if the actor had any kind of studio support behind him for this idea, but saw no reason to throw cold water on it. He wished the actor well, honestly enjoyed the anecdotes, had a very nice lunch, and when he reached the hotel he didn't go at first to the bungalow but inside to the desk, to say, 'Has Ms de Fuentes arrived yet?' Isabelle was supposed to have been on the morning flight out of Kennedy, which should have arrived at eleven-thirty.

  'Yes, I believe she's in the bungalow,' the clerk told him, and gestured away to Bryce's left, saying, 'And these two gentlemen are waiting for you.'

  Gentlemen? He turned, and saw two men rising from lobby sofas, moving toward him, and his first thought was that they were both the actor he'd just had lunch with. A second later, he realized, no, these were the real thing. And a second after that, he knew what it meant.

  Poker face, he told himself, though inside he was flabbergasted. Wayne had done it! He'd actually done it! Somehow, even though he'd come all the way out here to get out of the way, Bryce had never truly believed it, that Wayne would actually go through with it, that this story they were making up together would burst into real life.

  Wayne's done it, he thought, and something icy touched his spine.

  'Mr Proctorr?'

  'Yes?'

  'Detective Grasso,' showing a gold badge in a soft black leather case, 'and Detective Maurice, LAPD. We'd like to speak with you for a few minutes.'

  'Yes, of course.'

  He stood waiting, with a half smile, but Detective Grasso said, 'It should be in private, sir.'

  'I don't understand.'

  Detective Maurice said, 'We'd like to go to your room, sir, if we could.'

  'Oh.' Bryce frowned, reacting to the complications. 'The problem is,' he said, 'my fiancée just arrived from New York, I haven't even seen her yet, I don't know if she's showering or what she might be doing.' Gesturing at the sofas where the two men had been seated, he said, 'Couldn't we talk here?'

  'We'd prefer not to be in public, sir,' Detective Grasso said. Both men were polite, but cold, and insistent.

  Bryce said, 'Let me call the room, okay?'

  'Good idea,' Detective Grasso told him.

  They waited near the desk, both watching him, not talking together, as he went over to the house phones. Isabelle answered on the second ring, and he said, 'Sweetheart, hi, it's me, I'm in the lobby.'

  'Why?'

  'There are two detectives here, police detectives, I don't know what it's about, but they want to talk to me in the bungalow.'

  'Detectives?'

  'Could you — I don't know, could you go to the coffee shop for a few minutes? I'm sorry to do this to you, sweet—'

  'Of course, Bryce, not a problem. I'll leave now.'

  'Thank you.'

  'I'll be in the coffee shop, burning with curiosity, when you're finished.'

  He went back to the detectives: 'She's leaving there now.'

  'Sorry to disrupt things, sir,' Detective Grasso said, but he didn't sound sorry and he didn't look sorry.

  Bryce led the way along the outside path through the lush green plantings to the bungalow and unlocked them in, then said, 'Can I get you anything? Seltzer? Juice?'

  'No, thank you,' Detective
Grasso said. 'Could we sit here, sir?'

  'Yes, of course.'

  The living room area had two short sofas placed in an L shape with a large square glass coffee table. Bryce sat on the sofa to the right, Detective Grasso on the sofa to the left while Detective Maurice brought a chair over from the dining table.

  Detective Grasso had a small notebook and pen out now, and he said, 'You say that was your fiancée, sir?'

  'Yes, that's right, she just came out from New York.'

  'And what's her name, sir?'

  'Isabelle de Fuentes.'

  'Is she an Angeleno, sir?'

  'No, from New York. Spanish, really, her father was at the United Nations, but she's an American citizen. Excuse me, but, could you tell me what this is about?'

  'I'm afraid it's bad news, sir,' Detective Maurice told him.

  'Bad news?'

  Detective Grasso said, 'About your wife, sir.'

  'My — Oh, Lucie! We're getting a di — What do you mean? What about her?'

  'She's dead,' Detective Grasso said.

  Those four cold eyes looking at him, weighing him. An innocent man would feel guilty! I'm innocent, I didn't do it! 'Dead? But why would she — How?'

  'She was beaten to death in her apartment,' Detective Maurice told him.

  That was surprising, and horrible, too. He hadn't known, or wanted to know, how Wayne would do it, but he would have guessed a gun, or maybe poison, something like that. 'Beaten? Lucie?'

  'Wednesday night, sir,' Detective Grasso said. 'That would be the day after you checked in here.'

  'Tuesday, yes, but — Wait, please, I'm trying to understand this. Beaten?'

  And now he was thinking, it wasn't Wayne, that couldn't have been Wayne, it's an absolutely insane coincidence, never get away with that in a novel, there wasn't time for Wayne to have done it already, somebody broke in, some drug addict, rapist…

  'Somebody,' he said, and found his throat dry, and swallowed noisily. 'Somebody,' he said, 'broke in?'

  'Somebody,' he said, and found his throat dry, and swallowed noisily. 'Somebody,' he said, 'broke in?'